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Jon Bon Jovi's cousin, audio engineer Tony Bongiovi has figured out a novel way to make cheap-ass speakers sound a whole lot better. His device, an unusually sophisticated equalizer he calls the Digital Power Station, originally filled a refrigerator-sized unit with its analog components.

Now he's shrunk all that down to a single digital signal processor (DSP) and stuffed it into a JVC KD-S100 car stereo, where the technology makes its debut today.

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How can this possibly work?

The chip can be specifically tuned with more than 120 points of adjustment for the car in which it resides, teasing studio-quality sound out of small, cheap speakers in a noisy environment. Said Bongiovi, "It's so precise that the hatchback Ford Focus has a different tuning from the regular one."

The chip's algorithms can also be run in software, and the technique works on inexpensive home theater speakers, too. But he said there are no plans to develop the technology beyond the car stereo market. Yet.